The Chron's Willie Brown problem

By tim

Created 11/08/2011 - 11:55am

I'm glad someone else has noticed the problem [1]with giving a political fixer his own newspaper column. I've been talking about this for years[2] now, and the Chron doesn't care.[3] Brown is a walking conflict of interest -- he represents clients who have business in the state and the city, and he can freely hype those clients in the Chronicle, and he can promote candidates who he is doing fundraisers for -- and he never has to disclose anything.

Chronicle Editor Ward Bushee keeps saying that this is a celebrity, an-about-town column, but it's really not. Brown mostly writes about politics, and he's got a huge platform to help people who are paying him. It's an embarassment.

I don't expect the Chron to get rid of him, but at the very least, they ought to make him disclose when he has a financial interest in what he's writing about.